Dear GS Sandhu,

Julie and I have read your essay and we really liked your clear distinction between mathematical abstractions and physical reality. It's easy to accidentally blur this line and we think your clarity on this is very important when working on fundamental topics. We are also in agreement with the position you take about the nature of space, time, and causality. We defend compatible views in our essay, where we propose a model in which space is a kind of medium that has energy and can interact with physical matter, just as you argue must be the case. We were also pleased to see you defending the view that the future comes about through the operation of physical laws of nature operating in the present. Taking causation and change seriously is important for doing clearheaded science. We also rely on this approach in our essay, where we argue that a commitment to scientific explanations inevitable commit us to conservation laws, causal processes and genuine change.

Congratulations on a very well written essay that defends important fundamental concepts and distinctions, and proposes practical tests of the ideas you propose. We like your essay very much, and we have rated it very positively.

Best wishes,

David and Julie

    Dear David and Julie,

    Thanks for your most encouraging and positive comments on my essay. I have already read your excellent essay and rated it as such.

    I wish you best of luck in the contest.

    Warm Regards

    G S Sandhu

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    • Post #44

    Dear GS Sandhu,

    I like to ad my compliments to your essay here.

    Indeed there are too many peculiarities arising from the notion of time as a pure signal of light .

    Equally I agree to your a upgrading of Euclidian geometry towards a higher dimensional Minkowski space time manifold serving as a metric structure for a neo-Newtonian absolut space.

    But may I wonder if you might change your mind about" 4D space time as a physical entity", if you look back on its foundations ?

    For this issue I may recommend my footnotes in : http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1524

    Best wishes,

    Renate Quehenberger

    Gurcharn,

    You say,

    "It is well known from Maxwell's theory that the speed of light in vacuum depends on the permittivity ε0 and permeability μ0 of the physical space ( 0 0 c 1   ). Since permittivity and permeability are properties of the physical space, the speed of light in vacuum is also a property of physical space and cannot be derived from the metric properties of coordinate space."

    I believe that the medium of travel determines light's velocity and that space could be altered to increase an object's speed.

    Jim

    After studying about 250 essays in this contest, I realize now, how can I assess the level of each submitted work. Accordingly, I rated some essays, including yours.

    Cood luck.

    Sergey Fedosin

    If you do not understand why your rating dropped down. As I found ratings in the contest are calculated in the next way. Suppose your rating is [math]R_1 [/math] and [math]N_1 [/math] was the quantity of people which gave you ratings. Then you have [math]S_1=R_1 N_1 [/math] of points. After it anyone give you [math]dS [/math] of points so you have [math]S_2=S_1+ dS [/math] of points and [math]N_2=N_1+1 [/math] is the common quantity of the people which gave you ratings. At the same time you will have [math]S_2=R_2 N_2 [/math] of points. From here, if you want to be R2 > R1 there must be: [math]S_2/ N_2>S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] (S_1+ dS) / (N_1+1) >S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] dS >S_1/ N_1 =R_1[/math] In other words if you want to increase rating of anyone you must give him more points [math]dS [/math] then the participant`s rating [math]R_1 [/math] was at the moment you rated him. From here it is seen that in the contest are special rules for ratings. And from here there are misunderstanding of some participants what is happened with their ratings. Moreover since community ratings are hided some participants do not sure how increase ratings of others and gives them maximum 10 points. But in the case the scale from 1 to 10 of points do not work, and some essays are overestimated and some essays are drop down. In my opinion it is a bad problem with this Contest rating process. I hope the FQXI community will change the rating process.

    Sergey Fedosin